His first effort “Before it’s vanished” gained attention from the local scene in 2020, as he
pursued his drumming career after the pandemic shut down.
During this period, Rüdiger also played 40 concerts, refining and strengthening his skills as a
band leader, even opening the BBK Bilbao Festival alongside Phoenix and Roisin Murphy.
“The Dancing King” now presents the most twisting details of his world. Behind this title,
there is the desire to develop dreamlike music, the desire to cut oneself off from the real
world and ambient noise, to lose yourself in your inner world, to be master of your own
dance.
At the crossroads of folk, rock and electronica, Rüdiger evokes his musical heroes
(Radiohead, Robert Wyatt, Gastr del sol, The Beatles, Neil Young...) without ever falling
into an exercise in style. Thread conductor of the record is certainly the taste for melody and
pop writing that he manifests, essential tools to be able to let yourself be carried away in
daring compositions without ever getting lost. It goes from epileptic drums accompanied by a set of strings to a buzzing keyboard opening a swaying chorus, from a techno-like climb to a
psychedelic piano/vocal ballad and a pop song to electronic experiments. His perfect world
would fit into the Beatles' White Album, where each song could exist in its own right.
In the spare time of the Shorebreaker studio between 2021 and 2023, Johannes Buff
(brother, co-producer and owner of the place) and Félix Buff gave shape to dense music,
where the arrangements took the time to reveal themselves and the songs found their ideal
form. The minimalist Americana of the beginnings is left behind, the arrangements are
superposed and the rhythms become more complex, new territories are explored and the
instrumentarium expands: string quartet, bass clarinet, transverse flute, double bass,
euphonium, trumpet, synths and various keyboards... They were also able to count on the
precious help of the musicians of the live band: Vincent Bestaven (Botibol), Joseba Irazoki
and Antoine Philippe.
Felix Buff is a musician from the Basque country, a border territory and welcoming land, a
country in struggle and permanent construction, where reality is multiple, multilingual and
political decisions are felt frontally and in the first person. The desire is to escape from
reality (“The dancing king”), detour of a lysergic love song (“Once I was away”) or an ode to
nature (“The receiver”), but reality is never far away. “Memories” recounts the journey of a
migrant, “Breathe” makes the observation of the inaction of governments in the face of global
warming and “Till you’re gone” evokes the difficulty to move on to the next world. We find
more personal subjects in “Spot on”, a song about mourning of a close friend, and “Where I
Belong” & “Savage days” which address the theme of family and childhood. Rüdiger's lyrics
are a sort of personal notebook of lived situations and an outlet for a world on the edge
of the precipice.
The record counts among its notable collaborators Stéphane Laporte and Olivier Lamm from
Egyptology, Pierre Loustaunau (Petit Fantôme) and Laura Etchegoyhen (François & the
atlas mountain, Voyou).